Category: Personal

Hey everybody, it’s been a while! I’ve been fairly busy and haven’t really been focused on keeping my blog up to date. I have been crocheting diligently over the last few months, so it’s not for a lack of content, but a lack of discipline!

The reason I’m here today is because I want to share with you all my Crochet Resolutions. I would usually set myself some sort of resolution that is restricting my life in some way for the purpose of making myself a better, more healthy person. But this year I’ve decided that life will do as it will, but that I will be setting myself goals for my passion – my crochet.

My Five Crochet Resolutions of 2016:

To finish all my WIPs that are currently outstanding. Sounds easy enough, but according to the spreadsheet I use (gotta love spreadsheets!), I have 16 WIPs! That’s not including any that I may have cheekily started and not added to the spreadsheet, or WIPs that are hiding away somewhere in my home. My plan is to work through this list, and get these WIPs off this list! Whether it be by sitting down and sewing those last few squares together, buying that missing yarn and completing the project, or even frogging it back, putting the yarn back in my stash, and using the yarn for something else. I’m determined to sort my WIPs!

To take better pictures of my FOs with my bridge camera. I bought a camera a few months back, once my crochet orders kicked off. It was relatively cheap, a Canon bridge camera, but has a lot more functions than my old point-and-shoot digital camera. My aim this year is to sort out a little corner in my home for photographs, and have a simple backdrop, some good lighting, and take some good, quality photographs of my projects. If I’m feeling adventurous I might go so far as looking into photo editing software!

To build a supply of stock, and make some sales on Etsy. What I have been currently doing is putting up pictures of things that I have made, and wait to be approached with specifications of what somebody would like. This time, I would like to analyse what has done well, and make up some stock using different colour variations and put them on my Etsy page. So far I haven’t made any sales, because I don’t really have any stock on there. But really it could be that Etsy isn’t the right selling platform and I need to look at something else. I don’t know. I’m flexible to changing it up.

To get back into regular blogging (!) with a schedule. Hurray! That’s what you wanted to hear, right? I honestly do love blogging about what I’ve been up to in my little crochet world. Like I said earlier, I need the discipline. I love the whole WIP Wednesday and FO Friday. It may be that I need to be disciplined and stick to that structure. It may be that I need to reconsider and post more freely, a few times a week. When I started this blog I didn’t want to do that because I thought it might be a bit stagnant, by showing that I’ve been working on the same thing across a few different posts. But when I have a few orders of the same thing (like the dinosaurs) or I’m working on something large (like a blanket), it’s bound to happen. So we’ll have to see how it goes but I really, honestly want to be making more regular posts.

To design some of my own crochet patterns. This is one I’m possibly looking forward to the most in terms of creativity. The rest are success driven, or sort-out-my-stock driven, whereas this is expanding on my crochet knowledge, and putting it to the test. I have designed and published a few patterns already, but would like to turn those pages of scribbles in my notebooks into something more tangible, and something that I can share with people. I’m not fully sure on my goals yet – whether they be free patterns, whether I sell the patterns, or whether I keep the patterns to myself and sell the finished items. I’m not sure what I want to do. All I know is I want to get designing and writing up some pattern notes, and see where it takes me!

So there we have it! My goals are a little vague in some aspects, in that I haven’t quite figured out all the details yet, but I’m learning to be more flexible and just go with the flow with everything in life, rather than set up rigid plans and get upset when things don’t follow them correctly. At least I have a direction that I’m heading in, and something to focus on!